Book Review: Warriors

Spoilers!

Sometimes, you just need a simple ass-kicking story. I found that with Ted Bell’s 2014 book, Warriors, which is the eighth book in his Alex Hawke series. Hawke is most certainly not Jack Reacher, my favorite ass-kicker in fiction. Instead, Hawke is the sixth richest man in Britain, with a sprawling estate, a butler, a 4-year-old boy, and deep connections throughout MI6, the CIA, and with freelance mercenaries. He’s also a lord, so, he actually goes by Sir Alexander Hawke. Despite his lofty status in society, Hawke is a lethal force used to infiltrate the far-reaches of the world to save the world. Nobody is more capable than he is, or more willing.

With Warriors, Bell plays with the concept of the great sleeping dragon of China awakening, as many fear in real-life national security circles, and exerting her reach and influence in a hot war way, in the South China Sea, the wider Pacific, and against Japan, Britain, the United States, and other Western allies. For fictional purposes, of course, Bell ramps this up with a presidential assassination, a drone assault on the slain president’s funeral thereafter, the outright elimination of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and a military coup in China on top of all that. In the early stages of the book, for obvious reasons (to establish the villainous threat China and its would-be military dictator posed to Hawke and the world), the U.S. and its allies looked pretty dumb, both in big and small ways. And were slow on the uptake that China was absolutely waging war against them.

It should also be said, that even with Hawke saving the day in the end, as he was always going to do, China still assassinated the American president, fired missiles on American soil, and “took out” Iwo Jima and Okinawa! So, while Hawke neutralized General Moon, the would-be military dictator who led a coup against (real-life) Chinese President Xi Jinping, America, Britain, and Japan, at minimum, would still be surely declaring war and retaliating against China, right?! At minimum, China would be destabilized by the fact of a military coup, no matter how short-lived, and the world’s ostracization.

The reason China was able to militarily and technologically leapfrog and surprise Britain and the United States is because five years prior to the present events of the book, they kidnapped America’s leading military and technology guru and genius, William Chase, his wife, and his two children off the streets of Georgetown. His family was imprisoned in a North Korean death camp as leverage for Chase to then help China build nuclear submarines that dwarfed anything in existence, and significantly, they are autonomously directed, similar to drones, but y’know, a submarine. These submarines would then be strategically placed all over the Pacific. Each of the seven autonomous submarines Chase helped China build is 1,000 feet long. Currently, the world’s largest operational submarine is 603 feet, the BS-329 Belgorod, to put that into perspective. I struggle with Chase’s situation. In a world where Hawke and his team of CIA operatives and mercenaries don’t hostage-rescue his family in North Korea to eliminate the leverage and hold China has over him, and in a world where he himself isn’t then rescued by Hawke and his team to then deactivate the nuclear submarines before China can launch an attack on Honolulu, what was Chase thinking?! He literally would have helped China deliver massive blows to the West, killing millions. I understand he did it under the extreme duress of his family’s wellbeing, but sheesh. That’s tough. Again, like I said, Hawke does do exactly what I described, ultimately eliminating the threat, but still. And even then, a lot of bad stuff happened previously.

Somewhere in the course of all this going on, Hawke’s lover (and the bodyguard to his son), Nell, leaves him for the United States and another man. Hawke says he’s devastated, but then pulls a Ross from Friends and sleeps with another woman immediately (who also just so happens to be in league with General Moon’s murderous daughter, of course) while they’re “on a break.” Nell’s replacement, as bodyguard to the boy at least, Sabrina, just so happens to be best friends with that same woman Hawke slept with. She stupidly exposes way too much about her duties to this woman and Moon’s daughter, and even after she suspects she was drugged and assaulted while staying with them, she still brings the woman’s dangerous raven gifted to her into the boy’s nursery. She was very dumb. All that to say, Nell returns at the end of the book and rekindles her romance with Hawke. Hawke saved the day and got the girl (back) as the trope goes.

Overall, my first experience with a Ted Bell book reminded me of the fun I had devouring Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series. I still far prefer Rapp, not to say anything of Reacher, because Hawke is a little too hoity-toity royalty for my tastes, but I had a good time reading his escapades, nonetheless.